That was my first thought too, one that had since been fully removed but the deer would have no way to comprehend that, so to them it was still a no-go area.
It actually did include minefields. It wasn’t just electric fences on the iron curtain that separated West Germany from Czechoslovakia. So those deer had many reasons to fear the border.
3:33 - "If you took all the ideas you had and jam them together, you've had all the required ideas to get here" So there's an old stag in heat with a gun separating the two groups because of an old family feud???
The biggest surprise in this thing is that at no point, the words "iron curtain" are said. I was mentally shouting it at my phone the whole time this part in the regular episode was going on.
Knew it as soon as the question was read. Was hoping Tom would have known it as I seem to remember him mentioning it at some point in one of his videos. He didn’t go into it further in explaining that it wasn’t just any national border but the Iron Curtain which separated then Czechoslovakia from then West Germany. And it wasn’t just an electric fence but also minefields.
While I didn't know about the nature of the separation, I did get the 'removed electrical fence' and 'generational knowledge' aspects of the logic right in my head from the very start. It was just so obvious to me.
They remember anti personnel mines, thats the relevant part. You can only see so many relatives blown apart into bloody pieces before "don't go there" becomes institutional knowledge.
I was thinking that it had something to do with the split of Czechoslovakia or the fall of communism in that region because the question states this has been happening for over 30 years, roughly matching that time period. I didn't manage to guess the rest of it, but it's a really good question
3:16 Oh, Tom, funny thing you asked this in a round about Czechia, because if you were in Czechia, you wouldn't need to ask that, since the month October is called "říjen" in Czech, getting it's name from the Czech word for deer mating season!
Me: "Can a million deer at a million typewriters given unlimited time eventually produce Shakesdeer?" Deer: *Holds up front hooves, looks at hooves, looks at me, looks at hooves, glares at me* Me: "Um, yeah, sorry, never mind."
5:27 I have that exact same chair in the background of Bill Sunderland's set. The one to his left that's leaning back with white cushioning on it. Does anyone know what type of chair that is? I want to buy more of them.
My first thoughts ran through a series of unusual reproductive barriers. Like the two populations of deer had incompatible mating rituals, or they went into heat in different months, or they aren't awake at the same time.
interestingly the family of my dad is from (possibly a different stretch) of the Czech-German border and it was a custom to intermingle for them (mostly the women from the Bavarian side and the men from the Bohemian side) for hundreds of years. but i realise that's from before the iron curtain.. oh deer!
So this is a dear meme, in the original sense when the word was coined by Richard Dawkins. An idea or piece of knowledge passed down from one generation to the next.
The term "stag party" is used in the Simpsons season 1 episode "Homer's Night Out". Maybe the term has fallen out of use in the U.S. since 1989/1990? I suspect that the "do" part might be more confusing than the "stag" part.
Thinking that maybe there was once a minefield that's since been cleared. It's safe now, but the deer don't understand that, and so don't cross the area?
@@byeguyssryI just assumed that was Tom's way of saying "we're not working on anything actively at the moment, just waiting for the four of us to be free all at the same time"
so when a pavlovian avoidance is taught to successive generations, shouldn't that warrant a new name? i'll bet animal behaviorists now want those deer protected for future studies.
nah ah. That's how Pavlovian training passed down from parent to offspring works. It's still Pavlovian training, but we don't expect the generational complexity from deer. We do from corvids though, from the research at the University of Berkley, so maybe there is a word for it.
We do see the use of going stag or the phrase stag and doe here in Canada. Not the first time that I've encountered the slang though. Basically worked out what it was from context and confirmed that interpretation with google.
Is it that there *used* to be a road between them, and after generations of avoiding the road, they still avoid crossing that area, even if there is now no danger?
yes, that's surely kind of right: There was certainly a road - more precisely, a patrol road for the Czech soldiers who were guarding their border ... and nearby along this road, a fence and maybe some landmines or other dangerous devices - so, the road was not really the actual problem for the deer.
@@Nazuiko Wait, really? I knew that was true of moose, but deer are SIGNIFICANTLY smaller. Or is it not about the size of the animal but more about a driver losing control of the car and ending up in a worse wreck?
Why is that amazing? It's only fairly recently that we've allowed ourselves to study complex animal socio/cultural morés. The inter webs is helping citizen scientists immensely with the prevalence of video footage of animals doing unexpected stuff. But it's like 'how does the mind work', we feel we know the intricacies but it's us thinking we know.
@@ValeriePallaoro We've literally been studying and breeding animals for specific instincts for 15,000 years and we still don't know how to actually instill an instinct into an animal.
Oh right! This must've been what Bojo and his Brexit buddies thought was going to happen after Brexit happened! They thought that because these deer were allowed to cross the border of EU countries, but chose not to, that the EU would allow the UK to do the same thing, and wouldn't be fussed about goods and people travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland or France or whatever, but everyone would just stop wanting to do it because Brexit. They were obviously wrong, but that didn't stop them yelling "project fear!" whenever anyone pointed out how they were wrong.
Mines, my dear people. They don't stray from an entire stretch of land for a fence .... the entire border was very heavily mined. Mines create a way deeper fear in animals, that obviously also holds for much longer. So he botched the core of the question, but its still a very neat bit of trivia.
Not I. Watching a lot of his output in various channels for a few years. And he had mentioned the retirement/hiatus a number of times in videos last year. Incidentally Derek, it's actually two series "Things You Night Not Know" and "Amazing Places". Though it's also more easily summed up as the content on the Tom Scott (his main) channel.
I know it's accepted and the country itself put it forward to end confusion internationally, but I HATE it when people refer to the country as Czechia. To me it's The Czech Republic. I lived there for years and it just seems wrong to call it any other name. It's a wonderful nation with great people and I would live to go back and live there once again. I know I have to get used to "Czechia," but I can never call it that myself.
i like that probably half of the brainpower devoted to this question was used in search of deer puns
more than?
Makes the episode pretty hard to fallow
oh deer
"Those deer across the forest are not of our elk"
*Radio 4 clap* 👏👏👏👏
"Shakesdeer" was right there
I was listening to this in the car with my husband and yelled "SHAKESDEER!!" haha
I was... *deeply* worried that it was a minefield and they wouldn't cross it because boom.
That was my first thought too, one that had since been fully removed but the deer would have no way to comprehend that, so to them it was still a no-go area.
Actually, not far off the final answer
They wouldn't cross it because ElectroBOOM.
It actually did include minefields. It wasn’t just electric fences on the iron curtain that separated West Germany from Czechoslovakia. So those deer had many reasons to fear the border.
If they were male cattle, that would be abombinabull.
3:33 - "If you took all the ideas you had and jam them together, you've had all the required ideas to get here"
So there's an old stag in heat with a gun separating the two groups because of an old family feud???
the Sound of Music and Bambi not withstanding of course.
@ValeriePallaoro ah, obviously that old stag is bambi's dad, who famously sang in the sound of music
He said no deer biology, so not the gun
The biggest surprise in this thing is that at no point, the words "iron curtain" are said. I was mentally shouting it at my phone the whole time this part in the regular episode was going on.
Especially the combination of „30 years“ and Czechia was a big hint for me.
My first question would've been "was the other group also in Czechia"
Knew it as soon as the question was read. Was hoping Tom would have known it as I seem to remember him mentioning it at some point in one of his videos. He didn’t go into it further in explaining that it wasn’t just any national border but the Iron Curtain which separated then Czechoslovakia from then West Germany. And it wasn’t just an electric fence but also minefields.
While I didn't know about the nature of the separation, I did get the 'removed electrical fence' and 'generational knowledge' aspects of the logic right in my head from the very start. It was just so obvious to me.
Yep, the "over 30 years" immediately pointed me towards the end of the First Cold War.
@@Schmidtelpunkt "First" eh. I see what you did there.
Instead of in Verona, the deer-Romeo and Juliet took place in Venice-on. Good enough pun? ;-)
I remember this. There was a border between the groups between communist and capitalist countries. The border changed, but the deer remember.
Are they Pepperidge Farm deer then?
Those deer have their pride. They don't want to go into Bavaria. Quite understandable.
They remember anti personnel mines, thats the relevant part.
You can only see so many relatives blown apart into bloody pieces before "don't go there" becomes institutional knowledge.
czechia borderd east germany which was also communist no?
@@srekoslav It borders Saxonia, which was part of East Germany, and Bavaria, wich was part of West Germany.
Humans in Germany: "The Berlin Wall may be gone, but the wall in our heads is still standing way too strong."
Deer in Czechia:
... and deer in Bavaria, obviously the same
Yeah, same kind of game there. @@tobyk.4911
Love the puns - and the way they were made up on the hoof. ;-)
I am still not used to calling the county Czechia, so my only just woke up and still having my coffee American brain kept parsing it as Chechnya.
Thanks for saying. I thought it was somewhere 'new'
I was thinking that it had something to do with the split of Czechoslovakia or the fall of communism in that region because the question states this has been happening for over 30 years, roughly matching that time period. I didn't manage to guess the rest of it, but it's a really good question
Well yes, it has a lot to do with the fall of Communism (the fence was part of the iron curtain)
I'm surprised it took that long. My mind immediately went to the Iron Curtain
3:16 Oh, Tom, funny thing you asked this in a round about Czechia, because if you were in Czechia, you wouldn't need to ask that, since the month October is called "říjen" in Czech, getting it's name from the Czech word for deer mating season!
I was thinking airport flight path. Nothing dangerous in the open area, but there are scary noises in the sky.
I've heard this one before. But I couldn't remember the exact details at first. I was thinking land mines, right up until he said the right answer.
I hadn't heard it before, but mines were also my first thought lol. I figured there could still have been mines though
Being from a place known as "a short distance away" I got this one like hafway through the question.
Does one of the groups decent from RED red deer?
I do love the extra British vibe from this episode.
Buck soft what light through yonder win-Doe break. Good night everyone
"A doe by any other name would smell as sweet"
Tom, a stag party is a common name for bachelor party in the US.
5:16 "A doe by any other name smells just as sweet" was my thought.
*sweat. I've been close to some deer. It's not horrible, but they don't smell... pleasant to human noses.
Can't believe they missed Shakesdeer.
Ayyyyyyy 😂 dammit I wish I'd thought of that haha
Me: "Can a million deer at a million typewriters given unlimited time eventually produce Shakesdeer?"
Deer: *Holds up front hooves, looks at hooves, looks at me, looks at hooves, glares at me*
Me: "Um, yeah, sorry, never mind."
He even said 'I don't like ... ' but he's the slow one, everyone else romped it in.
5:27 I have that exact same chair in the background of Bill Sunderland's set. The one to his left that's leaning back with white cushioning on it. Does anyone know what type of chair that is? I want to buy more of them.
Not positive, but it might be Ikea.
It looks super gross, maybe time for a slipcover.
Hmm, the captions seem to be missing on this one?
Thanks for the head's up - now fixed.
MON-STAG-UE
My first thoughts ran through a series of unusual reproductive barriers. Like the two populations of deer had incompatible mating rituals, or they went into heat in different months, or they aren't awake at the same time.
interestingly the family of my dad is from (possibly a different stretch) of the Czech-German border and it was a custom to intermingle for them (mostly the women from the Bavarian side and the men from the Bohemian side) for hundreds of years. but i realise that's from before the iron curtain.. oh deer!
I was slightly shocked that they didn't even think about the Iron Curtain.
So were the deer. Or was it "a short distance?"
So this is a dear meme, in the original sense when the word was coined by Richard Dawkins. An idea or piece of knowledge passed down from one generation to the next.
Huh! Good call!
Yey! Czechia mentioned here!
In Canada, it's a Stag & Doe :D
the romeo and juliet pun they were looking for is "o deer o deer" which is relevant to the low quality of that pun :P
Got this one immediately :P
Every time I watch this episode, I chuckle that Red Deer is a city in Canada
4:57 not does apparently
Tom, Bachelor party for Americains. Canadians still often call it a Stag and Doe.
The term "stag party" is used in the Simpsons season 1 episode "Homer's Night Out". Maybe the term has fallen out of use in the U.S. since 1989/1990? I suspect that the "do" part might be more confusing than the "stag" part.
Did they used to be one group of Deer that got split by the fence, or were they two slightly separate groups?
1:01 "got no eye deer"
Thinking that maybe there was once a minefield that's since been cleared. It's safe now, but the deer don't understand that, and so don't cross the area?
I guessed the border part, but I thought the original barrier was a minefield. 😅
What's a stag do? Whatever it wants, really.
Referring to the iron curtain as simply "a fence".
An //electric// fence.
Fence is probably nearer to the truth than curtain!
@@OneFatStatue As long as you ignore the land mines :)
Sorry to go off topic, but I hope The Technical Difficulties returns sometime.
Tom mentioned in his Goodbye video on Monday that they do plan to do more Tech Diff in the future.
@@pittofdoom he said there'll LIKELY be Tech Diff vids
@@byeguyssryI just assumed that was Tom's way of saying "we're not working on anything actively at the moment, just waiting for the four of us to be free all at the same time"
Shakesdeer!
Rome-doe and Juliet?
Iron curtain? Pavlovian response to the once existing barrier?
I had that figured out in 5 seconds. Why didn't they start with Checia and 30 years ago?
It's about Lateral thinking; it's in the name. Giving away that much would've changed the game, also it wasn't Checia thirty years ago.
I knew it! I didn't know the specifics but I knew that this behaviour exists from a MinuteEarth video.
They're right to be wary. The fence has gone, but the electricity could still be there...
At first I wondered if one group of deer were just really, really ugly.
I only know what a stag do is from Oxventure.
They are still mad about that whole Czechoslovakia thing
Literally the other side of the country
WHOA WHOA WHOA. “For anyone outside of the Commonwealth” and then “for those in North America”?
I would have guessed minefield.
i honestly jokingly thought "racist deer" but i was kinda close
Iron Curtain?
I had expected it to be a matter of language, like the mating call had changed between the two groups or something.
Mmh 30 seconds in and I am already quite certain that I know the answer, but to be fair as a German I've an advantage
I guess it's a pride thing. Those deer simply don't want to go to Bavaria. Understandable.
WOW!
so when a pavlovian avoidance is taught to successive generations, shouldn't that warrant a new name? i'll bet animal behaviorists now want those deer protected for future studies.
Generational Trauma?
nah ah. That's how Pavlovian training passed down from parent to offspring works. It's still Pavlovian training, but we don't expect the generational complexity from deer. We do from corvids though, from the research at the University of Berkley, so maybe there is a word for it.
Just a lanuage barrier
So now I am trying to think why a bit of germany would have been retroceeded to the Czech Republic after the cold War.
tome scute?
I was wondering of one set of deer were too domesticated for the liking of the other set. Wrong.
That was my first thought, too.
Maybe the deer still identify with different politics and the Capitalism deer don't want to mix with the Communist deer.
Roe deer and Juliet?
I think the lateral question should be how to pronounce Lizzy's last name.
I love this group together! There have been a few groups recently that have been a bit of a miss.
✌️
Wherefore hart thou Romeo?
they're eastern european, so naturally they hate their neighbors
The other deer are from Bavaria. Which makes not wanting to mate with them understandable.
The deer insist on being central european rather than eastern but the other group keeps mislabeling them.
Look. Sometimes deer just know.
what we've got here is some generational trauma in action
C'mon, we're all thinking it... some racist deer right there!
"No Bambi, I don't want you playing with that West German riff-raff!"
Stag party in the U.S.
I think it’s more common to refer to them as Bachelors than stags.
I’ve almost always heard of it as Bachelors party.
We do see the use of going stag or the phrase stag and doe here in Canada.
Not the first time that I've encountered the slang though. Basically worked out what it was from context and confirmed that interpretation with google.
I learned this when researching the fall of Communist Rusia.
Is it that there *used* to be a road between them, and after generations of avoiding the road, they still avoid crossing that area, even if there is now no danger?
That was my first thought as well.
yes, that's surely kind of right: There was certainly a road - more precisely, a patrol road for the Czech soldiers who were guarding their border ... and nearby along this road, a fence and maybe some landmines or other dangerous devices - so, the road was not really the actual problem for the deer.
@@Nazuiko Wait, really? I knew that was true of moose, but deer are SIGNIFICANTLY smaller. Or is it not about the size of the animal but more about a driver losing control of the car and ending up in a worse wreck?
Yoooo 1000th like, let's go
Don't fawn all over each other
The other deer are orthodox christians where they are protestant deer?
Deer lord…
It's amazing we can observe stuff like this but still can't really explain how instincts are formed.
Why is that amazing? It's only fairly recently that we've allowed ourselves to study complex animal socio/cultural morés. The inter webs is helping citizen scientists immensely with the prevalence of video footage of animals doing unexpected stuff. But it's like 'how does the mind work', we feel we know the intricacies but it's us thinking we know.
@@ValeriePallaoro We've literally been studying and breeding animals for specific instincts for 15,000 years and we still don't know how to actually instill an instinct into an animal.
Oh right! This must've been what Bojo and his Brexit buddies thought was going to happen after Brexit happened! They thought that because these deer were allowed to cross the border of EU countries, but chose not to, that the EU would allow the UK to do the same thing, and wouldn't be fussed about goods and people travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland or France or whatever, but everyone would just stop wanting to do it because Brexit. They were obviously wrong, but that didn't stop them yelling "project fear!" whenever anyone pointed out how they were wrong.
Mines, my dear people.
They don't stray from an entire stretch of land for a fence .... the entire border was very heavily mined.
Mines create a way deeper fear in animals, that obviously also holds for much longer.
So he botched the core of the question, but its still a very neat bit of trivia.
If there were no mines; because there was electric fence ... your comment makes no sense. Backhanded compliment notwithstanding, of course.
The sweat stains on that chair are revolting and disgusting.
Quit fawning over the puns
the only thing i can say about this is oh deer
Who came here after seeing that he is gonna stop uploading?
he's still continuing lateral
He only said he was going to stop doing the 'Things You Might Not Know' series.
Not I. Watching a lot of his output in various channels for a few years. And he had mentioned the retirement/hiatus a number of times in videos last year.
Incidentally Derek, it's actually two series "Things You Night Not Know" and "Amazing Places".
Though it's also more easily summed up as the content on the Tom Scott (his main) channel.
My first guess is that the deer are racist. Like the light red deer and the dark red deer don't like each other and that's why.
I know it's accepted and the country itself put it forward to end confusion internationally, but I HATE it when people refer to the country as Czechia. To me it's The Czech Republic. I lived there for years and it just seems wrong to call it any other name. It's a wonderful nation with great people and I would live to go back and live there once again. I know I have to get used to "Czechia," but I can never call it that myself.
What's the reason for it? Is it like Great Britain being called Britain, or the United States of America being called The States?
if czechia returned to a monarchy you'll still call it the czech republic
Buck up buddy, it's not really your problem, is it?
from the moment the word Czechia was said id was going COLD WAR COLD WAR COLD WAR